Fernando Delgadillo

by Jose Gonzalez FrancoSeptember 07, 2017

Fernando Delgadillo is a strange human man. Looking at him in person, you are not faced with the artist who fills forums, with whom he expresses his memories until they become rhyme and melody, either with the singer-songwriter who is recognized in the streets, greeted in bookstores, projected in the media communication. What one observes there, sitting naturally, is a smiling man, and this is without doubt the best of his virtues.

Throughout 25 years of public life and three decades composing songs, Delgadillo has chosen freedom as his primary means of communication. He has not invented himself, simply projected as it is, without poses, without masks or shields. This is surely what his thousands of followers perceive: the man who takes a guitar and sings is not an enlightened being who recites absolute truths, but the merely human who invokes his errors, who proclaims his stumbling with so much sympathy until Make them motive of celebration, the one who denounces because he knows that it cannot be otherwise. Or, the one who speaks of love as one who builds a ship in which true crowds have to embark on the voyage.

What does he offer, what is the secret of Delgadillo? "I'm a fan," says a girl cheerfully. "He is also very handsome," says another. "That's the way I like them, big ones to carry me", he managed to exclaim a third. "I certainly identify with him," a young man says calmly. I have no better explanation: I identify with him. "

This is the most faithful of his offerings: identification with so many followers who, like him, have left mom and dad´s house to start a new life, who have been afraid of being robbed of their guitar: that any instrument with which one makes a living, the same can be a book, a brush or a bicycle, a car or a hope.

Delgadillo does not deny it: he was born privileged. He had a family, education and unrestricted access to a library. The rest, however, is the result of his efforts. He knows - he confesses - what it is to pass in front of a taco stand and have no choice but to sustain hunger with his hands, in the absence of money. He has also experienced the sense of being robbed and exploited by the big trade union owners. He also knows, and by memory, what represents the joy of having a couple of pesos in the bag, of working every day, of the taste of triumph when you bring about day by day.

He remembers with pride his origins: to record a sixty-minute cassette, to sell four or five during his nocturnal presentations, to begin to be known by word of mouth and to climb life with patience. Born musician? A little, he says. "I have a musical ear, a little rhythm," he adds. The rest, he says, is work, it is effort.

In full use of his illusions, he has opted for the free path; the one that does not have contracts with big companies or recorders that support it, nor advertising devices that support its image in the magazine programs that are transmitted every day in the morning. Instead, he has and counts on his "tribe": his unconditional group that surrounds him and accompanies him in his ways.

Fernando Delgadillo has created a true mythology in his songs. In their own labyrinths life beings as fantastic as a street retoucher, a man who receives disturbing calls in the middle of the night, a girl who draws colorful worlds on any paper, a certain rouge that dressed like crickets, a lover of the women who let themselves be portrayed, a sleepless slacker of 39 years and a night out stubborn, another drunk, who insists on buying a bottle in days of prohibition. The singer arrived with his album, Tiempo Ventanas, in which he speaks of "love, humor, social and experiential".

How much artistic life do you have left?, they ask, finally. "This is until the body stands," he says, sure of his answer.

At this moment, what keeps you there, on stage? "The illusion," he says quickly, without having to think about it, and returns to his task of smiling again.